


S is for Solitary

by creatureofhobbit



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-23
Updated: 2014-11-23
Packaged: 2018-02-26 18:45:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2662490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mike feels alone after Mona's death and wonders if there was anything he could have done differently to prevent it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	S is for Solitary

Thanksgiving was cancelled that year.

The relatives were all sent home. Fitz stuck around, though, and he and Aria had been locked in her room for who knew how long. Ella and Byron had reached out to each other as they’d just been making the moves towards doing, brought together by the loss of another of Rosewood’s girls.

No one was there for Mike. But the only person he wanted to see right now was the only person he couldn’t. Aria had stuck her head around the door at one point, asking if he wanted anything, but Mike had told her to go away. What could she possibly give him that he might want? The only thing he wanted was the one thing nobody could give him. And let’s face it, Aria had hated Mona. Even if it had looked as though they were getting along better by the end, Mike still couldn’t stand to look at Aria pretending she was sorry Mona was dead. So no, he didn’t want to talk to her.

Had she known what was coming? If Mona had had some idea of what was going to happen to her, why hadn’t she told Mike? It couldn’t be A, surely. Mike had thought the whole A thing was over and done with now. Unless Mona had kept it all from him. Maybe there would have been something he could have done to protect her, instead of having gone round to meet his friends just to get away from Aria and Fitz sucking face. But it hadn’t seemed as though she knew. The last conversation he’d had with Mona, she’d talked about how excited she was to spend Thanksgiving with her family, including some cousin who’d pretended she had to study but was coming back to surprise her, except Mona’s mother had blown the surprise. That hadn’t sounded like someone in fear for her life. 

Or maybe it was Mona trying to protect Mike from whatever it was. He wished people would stop doing that already. His family had done that enough times over the years. Look at the way they’d kept the whole Meredith thing from him at first. And for a long time, he hadn’t known that their father had had another brother. He’d found that out when he and Aria had been looking for hidden Christmas presents in their grandparents’ house and instead he’d found an old picture of his dad as a boy with another boy who looked a bit like Mike. Aria had hurriedly taken the picture off him and stuffed it back in the box where he’d found it, explaining that the boy in the picture was their uncle Scott. “Dad found him dead,” she whispered. “When he was a senior and Scott was a junior. He doesn’t like to talk about it. Don’t mention you saw it.” Mike wondered how come Aria knew and he didn’t, but he left it alone until Byron was ready to talk about it. He’d overheard his parents talking once about how his dad was worried that the way Mike had been acting was reminding him of Scott. Mona was the only person Mike had ever told that sometimes he had wondered if Scott’s fate would also be his.

Mona was the only person that Mike felt he could talk to. She was the only one who was able to make Mike smile on his bad days, she was the one who was able to make him feel normal again. He’d thought things were getting back to normal with his friends after he’d started seeing the shrink, but after Connor’s car got vandalised and Mike was accused of it, he’d started hearing comments along the lines of “Course he did it, what else do you expect from Mental Mike?” Again, Mona was the only person who knew that he had overheard that. Once Fitz had pointed out to the principal that there was no evidence that Mike had done it, Connor’s gang had backed off and everyone started talking to him again, but Mike knew that things between him and his friends would never be quite the same again. He couldn’t trust them in the same way any more. But with Mona, Mike felt like she understood what he was going through in a way no one else ever could.

Mike had told her everything; his conflicted feelings around his parents’ separation and Ella’s moving to Europe with Zack, his issues of feeling isolated among his friends, his fears that one day his mental health issues would resurface. And he’d thought Mona had told him everything too; she’d talked about how she’d felt when Alison had made her into Loser Mona, and how abandoned she’d felt by Hanna when Hanna had started spending more time with Aria and the others again and giving Mona made up excuses for not wanting to spend time with her any more. When he’d talked about Byron and Ella’s problems, she’d opened up to him about the separation of her own parents, and it had been easy for Mike to forget that Mona was the person who’d brought Byron’s affair out into the open in the first place. 

Now Mike wondered if there was anything else Mona hadn’t told him. Was that why she’d tried to end it with him a few weeks ago, because she thought this might have been coming? Was it really possible that Mona had been so scared this whole time, and hadn’t felt she could tell Mike the truth? If so, why not? Was it that she felt she couldn’t trust him enough, at least not in the way he had trusted her?

There were so many questions Mike had, and he knew that only one person could ever have answered them. For a moment, he tried to imagine that this whole thing was some kind of crazy joke, and that Mona was going to stick her head around the door, asking Mike if he wanted to hang out. 

But it was never going to happen. And without her, Mike felt that he was completely alone once more.


End file.
